Little-known Facts about IELTS (Part 2)

The internationalisation of higher education in recent times has been a key factor that has driven the demand for IELTS. Given that the test is recognised for entrance to universities and colleges across the English-speaking world, it is the preferred way for most youngsters aspiring to get a foreign education to demonstrate their English proficiency.   

In this blog post, we will talk about some of the measures that make IELTS fair and highly reliable.

Ensuring quality and fairness

Over the years, IELTS has established itself as an assessment tool that is fair to all test takers, whatever their nationality, cultural background, gender or special needs.

For a start, it assesses language skills, not specialist knowledge, so the topics covered are all quite general in nature. The test measures practical communication ability, which means that learning prepared answers by rote will not get test takers anywhere. One of the pluses of IELTS is that it recognises all standard varieties of native-speaker English, such as Australian English, British English and New Zealand English. You can rest assured that your background will in no way affect the outcome of the test.

There are safeguards and systems in place to ensure that the delivery of the test is both consistent and secure. Unique test versions, for instance, are created so that test takers will never sit the same test twice. Furthermore, each test version is subject to routine analysis in order to check whether the performances of test materials, test takers and Examiners are in line with expected standards.

Reliability of test results

Not many people know that all active IELTS Examiners receive periodic feedback on their performance. This task is performed by a team of IELTS Principal Examiners and Assistant Principal Examiners, who second-mark selected Speaking and Writing performances to check assessment quality.  Additionally, if there is a significant difference between a test taker’s scores – for example, a band 5 for Reading and band 8 for Speaking – the IELTS computer system flags it up so that double marking is carried out without fail. Do not miss the final part in this blog post series – among other things, you will get to read about IELTS test security regulations.